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Environment

The heart bleeds

After two years 'on the inside', Green MEP Caroline Lucas reveals what it is like banging your head against a brick wall in the European parliament, while Angharad Jones tells of her terror when peaceful protests in Gothenburg against globalisation turned to violence

Jean Lambert and I thought we had a pretty good idea of what to expect and we were under no illusions about the institution we were about to work in - and try to change. We were the first British Green MEPs to be elected to the European parliament, and we knew that the European Union had started more than 40 years ago with the ideals of peace and internationalism. But we felt that, over time, these had been swamped by a relentless drive for power and profits.

The single market, the Maastricht Treaty and monetary union have followed one another. Each, we thought, put profit before people and the environment and with every step economic control has been centralised, giving ordinary people less and less say in the decisions that affect their daily lives.

After two years "on the inside", my awareness of the tension between the possibility to achieve positive change on the one hand and the overriding importance placed on international trade and competitiveness on the other has become ever more intense. Take the commission's sustainable development strategy, which was formally presented at the recent Gothenburg summit. With a few important exceptions, it is a very positive document containing a number of radical policies, including energy taxes, together with specific targets and clear timetables. Yet at Gothenburg the council of ministers gutted it: ever obedient to industry demands back home, they stripped it of all its most positive elements. Targets, timetables and vision have gone.

This is a process that has been repeated time and again. Take another example: on many counts, the EU appears to be a role model for environmental policymaking, with EU air quality, water pollution and vehicle emissions standards among the most ambitious in the world. These factors give the EU enormous potential as a pioneer of environmental best practice and sustainable development.

The reality, however, is often very different. According to the European Environmental Agency, in its second assessment of the European environment (1998), there has been little or no progress in Europe since 1991 on 12 key environmental problems. "Positive development in the state of the environment" was found with respect to just one of the 12 problems - the ability to address technological and natural hazards. "Little or no change" was detected for four problems, while "unfavourable development" was found for the remaining seven problem areas, such as soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Successive assessments from 1999 and 2001 only report a continuation of these negative trends.

One way of explaining this conflict at the heart of the union is to recognise that, in spite of expounding very positive environmental policies, the EU's overriding priority remains ever-increasing international trade and competitiveness. Its blind support for economic globalisation means that it is unable to address the problems that follow inevitably in its wake.

Pressures from industry play a significant role in this. Brussels teems with more than 10,000 professional lobbyists, who roam the halls of the commission, council and parliament buildings, the vast majority of them from PR firms, industry lobby groups, and individual companies.

My most recent contact with them came when I wrote the European parliament's report on aviation's impact on the environment. I argued that, in order to start reducing aviation's greenhouse gas emissions, the huge tax advantages enjoyed by the industry should end, so that prices better reflect the true cost of air transport.

As a result, my office became like a waiting room for the corporate lobbyists. Every sector of the aviation industry came to see me: representatives from airports, airlines, aircraft manufacturers, courier companies - you name it, they came in. And their message was at least consistent: "We care about the environment, we've put a nature reserve in the corner of our airport, don't pick on us, pick on another industry." Here the consistency broke down as they picked different industries: railways for putting weedkiller on their tracks, or motorists because of congestion, or whatever.

This lobbying is at the heart of the EU. Huge companies, with turnovers greater than many countries, can employ whole teams of lobbyists whose mantra is always the need for ever greater international competitiveness - an aim which is fast becoming regarded as the single most important indicator of a society's health. At last year's EU Lisbon summit, a new objective for the union was agreed - to become the "most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world". Powerful industry lobby groups, meeting at the first European business summit in Brussels a few months later, began to map out what this would mean in practice. The titles of some of the summit workshops indicate their approach: "Biotechnologies - building consumers' acceptance" was the title of one, while another bluntly asked "How can the legal and regulatory framework be transformed to better support the capacity of companies to innovate?"

This is the agenda driving Europe. As a member of the parliament's trade committee, I witness it first hand every week. For example, I was recently appointed the parliamentary rapporteur for a report on the EU-Mexico agreement. In spite of all its rhetoric about responding to the needs of poorer countries, the EU has used this agreement against a country in which well over half the population live in poverty.

It has forced open trade in services, investment and intellectual property at a depth and speed not even dreamt of in the World Trade Organisation. Similarly, in the recent EU-Bangladesh agreement, the EU pursued a single-minded and aggressive approach on intellectual property rights with one of the poorest countries in the world. In these bilateral trade agreements, away from the glare of publicity, the EU is pursuing an offensive, narrowly-defined free trade agenda with no concern about its impact on the poorest or on the environment. Meanwhile, at the international level, the commission and council enthusiastically push for a new trade round at the forthcoming World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Qatar, despite objections from large numbers of developing countries.

My criticism that this strategy demonstrates that the EU has learnt nothing from Seattle is brushed aside with the knee-jerk response that more free trade equals greater poverty eradication. This, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary - but nothing must be allowed to get in the way of the EU becoming a meaner, fitter, leaner competitor in world trade.

The Gothenburg protests, the Irish "no" vote, increasing Euro-scepticism, and low voter turnout all demonstrate that there is a high price to be paid for the EU's choice.

And yet alternatives are possible, and it is these that we are working for. It is precisely at the European level that action is needed to set real controls on multinational corporations, to introduce new competition laws, import and export controls, corporation and energy taxes, together with "site here to sell here" policies to prevent companies threatening to relocate rather than raise standards. These are some of the policies that could genuinely address the challenge of climate change, for example, reconciling economic, social, and ecological policy and setting out a vision of a better quality of life for all. This could be the kind of goal needed to regenerate political legitimacy and popular engagement with the EU.

If the EU continues to put its corporate-led, deregulated, neo-liberal agenda above social justice and sustainable development, the result will be further marginalisation and exclusion. People will only engage with an EU that is relevant to their everyday lives, and which they feel is democratic and accountable. The dominance of economic globalisation on the EU's agenda ensures that the EU is moving in precisely the opposite direction.

I wrote these last words well before the demonstrations in Gothenburg 12 days ago. Since then, they have only been reinforced by the events.

On the front line

It all started when around 25,000 protesters attended a very peaceful demo against Bush on the Thursday. Prior to this, the Swedish prime minister had met 300 campaigners to talk about some of their concerns. (Can you imagine Tony Blair doing this?). Then word got round that the police were holding about 300-400 protesters hostage in one of the schools in which people were staying.

They claimed to have found evidence that the protesters were intending to cause violence, though the protesters claim the police found nothing whatsoever. They surrounded the school with horses and dogs and were apparently very intimidating - people were terrified and barricading themselves in the toilets. I was told that they broke a girl's arm and refused to get an ambulance, and there was an 85-year-old woman inside.

It seems that they refused to negotiate with the organisers, who had been quite open with the police from the beginning about what they were planning. In the end, at least 200 people were arrested and kept in buses for 12 hours, before being released.

In the meantime, many of the other protesters had wandered from the anti-Bush protest and were demanding the release of their fellow protesters.

There were about 2,000 of us. They were trying to break through the police barricades and some were throwing objects at the police - though most people were chanting "No violence!" We were occasionally charged by horses. Some young people were burning American flags and hundreds of people were cheering.

On the Friday, I got caught up in a riot outside the restaurant where the delegates were meant to be meeting for lunch.

A peaceful demo suddenly turned nasty, and it was terrifying. There was a lot of violence on both sides. It's no use blaming it all on the police - some of them were terrified as they were seriously outnumbered, and they panicked.

They beat up journalists and set their dogs on innocent people but some rioters were extremely aggressive, and were beating up other protesters who were trying to prevent them from destroying shops. They were also throwing stones at the horses.